The aim of this workshop is to introduce graduate students to some specific core topics which will be under study at the upcoming MSRI program on Geometric Group Theory (GGT) in 2016. GGT encompasses a wide range of topics. The four minicourse topics, listed below, have been chosen because they are central themes in GGT and in the upcoming MSRI program. Moreover, each topic is accessible to students with a range of backgrounds: the basic definitions are straightforward, with many simple and illuminating examples to work through, yet lead through to important questions in current research.